Trump could face criminal prosecution for espionage – according to a Harvard Law professor
Tag: Trump
Trump will abandon his own failed site and it’s shareholders
Ads account for 90% of Twitter’s revenue, and now that advertisers know exactly what Twitter would look like under Elon Musk’s leadership — they should be terrified
Source: Elon Musk says he would reverse Twitter’s ban on Donald Trump. | Media Matters for America
The beginning of May before midterm elections marks the start of primary season and six months of fall campaigning. The conventional view this year is that Democrats will be clobbered in November. Why? Because midterms are usually referendums on a president’s performance, and Biden’s approval ratings are in the cellar.But the conventional view could be wrong because it doesn’t account for the Democrat’s secret sauce, which gives them a fighting chance of keeping one or both chambers: Trump.
Murdoch’s destroying America’s 450 year Dream
Fox News personality Tucker Carlson is the focus of an in-depth three-part report by The New York Times that was published online on Saturday and will appear in the Sunday newspaper. Part one is titled “How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable.” “In the years since, Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice — “We don’t judge them by group, and we don’t judge them on their race,” Mr. Carlson explained to an interviewer a few weeks before accusing impoverished immigrants of making America dirty — his show teaches loathing and fear. Night after night, hour by hour, Mr. Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilization under siege — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters in American cities, by diseased migrants from south of the border, by refugees importing alien cultures, and by tech companies and cultural elites who will silence them, or label them racist, if they complain,” the newspaper reported.
“Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill, a member of the Select Committee, characterized the January 6 attack on our democracy as a “dry run” – implying it could happen again – perhaps successfully. It will happen again – unless we put mechanisms in place to constrain a corrupt president from exploiting the absolute power presently conveyed by the Insurrection Act. That change needs to happen now – before yet another authoritarian – or even the same one – tries another Jan. 6 and succeeds,” he argued.
Democracy protects the rights of its enemies to its own detriment at times.
Trump’s indictment and conviction must occur as quickly as possible. The upcoming midterm elections won’t simply be a battle between Republicans and Democrats. They will be a battle between Trump acolytes and fair election supporters over protecting the integrity of our elections and our democracy. The sooner Trump is held accountable for his criminality, the safer American democracy will be.
Source: The United States vs. Donald J. Trump — Why It Must Happen Soon | The Smirking Chimp
“again help our partner ( Trump) to become president “
Soloviev expanded on that point, suggesting that Russia should just go ahead and nuke the US because that is the true nature of the war in Ukraine.
Propagandists on Russian state television told their public audience last week that the time has arrived to sever diplomatic relations with the United States and that the Kremlin is finalizing its “preparations” to interfere with future American elections. The Daily Beast’s Julia Davis reported on Monday that President Joe Biden’s unwavering support for Ukraine has revitalized Moscow’s appetite for manipulating the American electorate. Their objective, one of the individuals revealed, is to “again help our partner,” former President Donald Trump, “to become president.”
Trump’s Republicans are now voting for Putin and against the Ukraine
A poisoned well: 63 Republicans just voted against even expressing support for democracy
Straight from Trump’s Playbook or Steve Bannon’s appoint as many of your friends to positions that will hamper any new government. There’s no ICAC to investigate the corruption that this government has delivered and wielded on the Australian electorate. Economic and Cultural Crimes done dirt cheap.
The Australian Federal Police Association, which represents 4,000 AFP members, has placed the establishment of a “far-reaching anti-corruption body” among its highest priorities ahead of the federal election, alongside improved support for officers suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, greater resourcing, and stronger firearms regulations.
The anti-corruption subject has raised its head once again. Now the Australian Federal Police are calling for a commission with far reaching arms. I thought the AFP were a voice for the LNP, however this report in the Guardian tells me something different. This commission must have retrospective powers. The Scummo team doesn’t want that. One has to wonder why? Could it be that the vast majority of them are corrupt?
Labor has already committed to an anti-corruption commission with the strength and powers of a standing royal commission, including the ability to hold public hearings.
Attorney-General Michaelia Cash has defended the appointment of ex-Liberal MPs and coalition staffers to high-paying roles on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, saying they are “qualified”.
It was the third time in recent months Putin has blasted the so-called “cancel culture”. Which is exactly what Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the Republican party have blasted for several years.
This is the definition of “Insanity” and irresponsible lending.
Banks Are Still Willing to Lend to Trump March 9, 2022 at 2:03 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 76 Comments “A bank’s decision to loan Donald Trump’s company $100 million is the latest evidence the former president might survive fraud investigations and a business-world backlash over his efforts to stay in office after losing the 2020 election,” the AP reports. “San Diego-based Axos Bank finalized the loan with the Trump Organization on Feb. 17.” “That’s just three days after public revelations that the Republican’s longtime accountants had disavowed a decade’s worth of his financial statements amid allegations by New York’s attorney general that they had exaggerated his wealth.”
While Putin is “doing it” the West merely “postures”.
It shouldn’t be difficult to seize—or at least freeze and hang onto—the wealth Russian oligarchs have deposited in the West. After all, a mega-yacht is hard to miss, and private jets, some of the most valuable assets that can be purchased, can barely move across an airport taxiway without being directed and tracked by air traffic controllers. Earlier this week, France did manage to seize the 290-foot Amore Vero, owned by close Putin associate Igor Sechin, but it was one of the few oligarch-linked items taken since the war started.
What would Senator Joe McCarthy and J E Hoover have said and done with a Putin loving Trump?
Trump’s fawning admiration of Vladimir Putin is well known, but it has often been brushed off as a quirk. We should have known how dangerous Putin was when he praised Trump as “impressive.” Trump is impressive the way spoiled butter left out too long is, rancid and foul-smelling. Now Trump is calling Putin “smart” and “savvy” and a “genius” for his brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Will the ALP take advantage of Murdoch’s support of Russia and Morrison’s love fest with Murdoch?
Democrats decried Trump’s praise for Putin as “undermining national security” and “near treasonous.” But his comments also represent “a great opportunity for Democrats,” one pollster said. Americans, and particularly those who are older, will not side with Russia, the pollster added.
Outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and the AP are failing in a basic civic obligation after Trump pushed January 6 pardons, called for more demonstrations, and said Pence should have “overturned the election”
But let us be clear: No American president is going to go to war with Russia over the Ukraine. There is no compelling US national interest in a military involvement in that part of the world, and Russia is a nuclear-armed state. The steps President Biden has spoken about, including sending 8,000 US troops to countries in the vicinity of Ukraine that are allied with Washington, are (rather weak) symbolism. The threat of economic sanctions is in any case far more powerful. But Biden wouldn’t be playing such a weak hand if the US had had a unified position for the past five years and if Trump hadn’t appeared to be working for the other side.
Source: How Trump appeased Putin and Endangered Peace in Ukraine
Is Australia’s Scott Morrison the 3rd Musketeer?
There’s a truism of conventional wisdom, broadly accepted on both sides of the Atlantic, that British and American politics since World War II have run in rough parallel. Sometimes one of the two Anglophone democracies gets ahead and sometimes the other falls behind, but roughly similar phenomena — adjusted for cultural differences and quite different political systems — tend to occur at roughly the same time.
Source: So what the hell happened to Boris Johnson — and can it happen to Donald Trump? | Salon.com
Note Americans still call Murdoch ‘the Australian Billionaire’ not even the Australian-American. He simply isn’t one of them but might as well be a Russian in his support for Trump and the degree of influence he has.
Republican outlets like Politico and Fox and the Wall Street Journal (the latter two echo chambers for reactionary Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch) have been asking whether Biden’s is a failed presidency. The stupid gives me vertigo. After the lunacy Trump put the country through, even if Biden had had fewer successes than he did, he’d have been a roaring success just by not replicating the previous four years of dysfunction.
Trump also made clear, however, that he will not cease inciting the insurrectionist movement—whose animating lie, that the 2020 election was “stolen” through fraud, continues to stir threats of far-right extremist violence. According to a report from the Department of Homeland Security shared on January 3 with various US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, “threat actors will try to exploit” the January 6 anniversary “to promote or possibly commit violence.” The DHS report cites extremist material circulating online, including flyers calling for renewed attacks on the seat of American government: “This was just the beginning,” one says, featuring an image of rioters inside the Capitol Building a year ago, doctored with blood splatter. “Reunion on Capitol Hill January 6 2022,” it further reads.
Source: Trump Continues to Incite the Violent Extremist Movement of January 6 – Mother Jones
As much as we may critique the democratic system in the United States for not living up to its name, or the Democratic Party for not getting enough done, what we now face is dire. Trump himself may not precisely fit the “classic” definition of a fascist leader — we can quibble about that around the edges — but he’s close enough for many experts. More to the point, he is a nonstop liar, a conman and a sociopath. He doesn’t care about his own followers, only about himself. No such person should be in a leadership position at any level.
Source: Are we normalizing the “death of democracy” by talking about it so much? Definitely not | Salon.com
Trump loves Russia, Nth Korea, and so it’s no surprise he loves Israel. He is anti- Democratic and approves of autocratic rule and in particular their leaders. However, he doesn’t conflate Jews with Israel. Israel on the other hand conflates itself with Jews, even when they are increasingly becoming distanced from it. Lets face it Israel only has 30% of the worlds Jewish population. and 25% of Israelis aren’t Jews. So to call Trump anti-Semitic is simply to say he’s pro-Israel and that Israel is anti-Semitic as the worlds Jews are turning their backs on the State in increasing numbers. However, if the Western world and some Middle Eastern countries are largely pro-Israel and one considers that Jews against Israel are the real representatives of Judaism, it’s community and it’s spirit, then yes anyone “for Israel” is anti-Semitic.
Donald Trump said that the American Jews “no longer love Israel” in a recently aired interview, claiming that “evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country.” “People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel,” Trump told Israeli journalist Barak Ravid in a Friday episode of podcast “Unholy: Two Jews on the news.” Trump continued: “I’ll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country. It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress. And today I think it’s the exact opposite.”
Even once Trump started receiving the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), a daily summary of high-level national security and intelligence issues, Trump chose not to read it, according to Ted Gistaro, a career CIA analyst who frequently briefed Trump. This backed up earlier reports that Trump did not read the PDB. “He touched it,” Gistaro said when asked how closely Trump read the briefs. “He doesn’t really read anything.”
Source: Trump Was ‘Fact Free’ During Briefings, Says Former Intel. Director – Rolling Stone
Never forget Atlantic City the real reflection of Trump’s economic record. There’s his inheritance too blind Freddy would have over $12bn dollars after 40 years doing nothing. DJ Trump has $2.5bn and trail of blood and carnage in his wake.
Chuck Jones of Forbes reports that Trump was in the habit of boasting about economic gains during his administration, but now his records are being “soundly beaten” according to the S&P 500.
Apologies to Alec, but close your eyes and you’ll think this guy is the real deal.
Source: SNL Finally Has a Truly Great Trump Impersonator – Mother Jones
An array of legal investigations into the business run by former President Donald Trump picked up new steam in the last two weeks. From Scotland to the tony New York City suburbs, Trump’s sprawling empire is facing new threats on at least three fronts.
Source: Trump Faces New Legal Threats on Both Sides of the Atlantic – Mother Jones
If Morrison’s LNP are now calling for greater voter ID as Trumpsters are in America will we see them crying out ” Stop the Steal” here as well? Don’t be surprised what lays ahead!!
Hill said in another October interview that Trump wanted to “stay in power forever” like Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He saw Putin as the kind of [the] epitome of the badass populist, frankly, you know, the kind of person that he wanted to be: super-rich, super-powerful, no checks and balances, and essentially being able to stay in power forever,” she told the Daily Beast.
Source: Ex-WH Staffer Fears What Trump Would Do if Reelected: It’s ‘Different in the Second Term’
What a surprise that Australia’s LNP are pushing for the same policy here. Do they have an original thought among them?
This year, Republicans have used these seeds of doubt to push through more than 30 laws in 19 states to restrict voting, which in many instances largely impact Latino, African-American and Asian citizens.
NEW YORK (AP) — New York prosecutors investigating former President Donald Trump’s business dealings have convened a new grand jury to hear evidence in the probe as the previous panel’s term was set to run out, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press Thursday.
Source: New Grand Jury Seated As Trump Criminal Probe Continues | HuffPost Latest News
Kari Lake, the Arizona gubernatorial candidate recently endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has embraced fringe far-right figures in her campaign events, including publicly thanking a Nazi sympathizer for his support and appearing with figures linked to the QAnon conspiracy, a CNN KFile review of her appearances has found.
As our recent investigation detailed, law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol testified to Congress that they believed the mob of Trump extremists was far more heavily armed with guns than is definitively known. Internal communications from January 6 among US Park Police and other agencies that have since been made public support that view. The lack of certainty, the officers told lawmakers, was a result of their limited capacity to make arrests that day amid the sheer number of people, compounded by fears that taking more aggressive action could set off perilous violence. A document obtained recently by a government transparency watchdog, Property of the People, contains indications that the FBI had specific intelligence, prior to January 6, about armed people headed for the nation’s capital. According to emails circulated among FBI agents in the bureau’s Seattle field office on January 5, intelligence analysts with the Washington State Fusion Center had specifically noted social media comments suggesting that some residents of the state were “planning to travel armed to Washington D.C. for tomorrow’s protests there.”
Source: Evidence of Armed Trump Extremists Continues to Emerge in January 6 Cases – Mother Jones
All indications are that Trump is going to cast the midterm elections as a referendum on himself rather than on Biden. That’s hardly surprising, given Trump’s sociopathic ego. He cast his entire presidency as a referendum on himself.
Source: How Trump Might Save the Democrats | The Smirking Chimp
Murdoch continues to provide human garbage with a platform to spread his filth
Trump said, “We have hundreds of thousands of people coming in from Haiti.” That’s a lie. He continued, “Haiti has a tremendous AIDS problem. AIDS is a step beyond. AIDS is a real bad problem. So hundreds of thousands of people are coming into our country and if you look at the stats, you look at the numbers. Just take a look what’s happening in Haiti. A tremendous problem with AIDS.” What stats and numbers is he quoting? The Russian Trump Tower memos? Does Trump believe a person catches AIDS from a handshake or a cough? “Many of those people probably will have AIDS, and they’re coming into our country, and we don’t do anything about it. We let everybody come in. Sean, it’s like in a death wish. It’s like a death wish for our country!” What a garbage human being Donald Traitor Trump is.
Hannity immediately changed the subject.
Source: Trump Racist Rant: Haitian Migrants Are Bringing AIDS To Infect Us | Crooks and Liars
For all such righteous splutters, Dershowitz and Trump have a point in pointing out a symptom of the US body politic that has become cripplingly apparent: business and the interests of capitalism have come to control speech, its circulation, its distribution. For decades, they had already come to guide politicians and political parties, exercising influence through campaign donations. Why run for elected office when you can buy it? In 2010, the US Supreme Court decision of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission found that limits upon “independent political spending” from corporations and private interest groups violated the First Amendment. Those with deep purses could only deem this the natural order of things: if you have cash, spend it to influence opinion in the name of free speech. Put rather simply, such speech was a shield big capitalism could well employ if it needed to. (Rep. Lieu, take note.)
Source: Trump, Twitter and the Digital Town Hall – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Melbourne’s rioters honour Trump with their violence
Throwing away any notion of a social contract and that “individualism is just all me, no we” a handful of basically misinformed working-class protesters took to the streets to revolt, protest, tear down the “system” and basically any notion of their part in any social contract. Meanwhile, they were doing the work justifying the extreme right’s demands to change the government who is in their lives. Isn’t it a coincidence that Matthew Guy just became leader of the opposition and needed anti-Dan on the front pages?
More than one Trump-Pence flag was seen amid the crowd, along with a red MAGA cap or two. The disparate group of unionists, anti-vaxxers, anarchists, right wingers (including Proud Boys and neo-Nazis) and general troublemakers shut down parts of a city already crippled by COVID-19. Their agenda, apparently initially sparked by suspension of access to tea rooms and mandated vaccination due to viral spread in the construction sector, was hijacked. It morphed into a general protest against authority, targeted at lockdowns, government, police and even the construction union.
Source: Melbourne’s rioters honour Trump with their violence
As the Trumpist movement escalates its assault on American democracy and society, the country’s political and leadership class cannot reasonably claim the defense of ignorance, or protest that this was all so “unprecedented” and came as a total surprise.
Trump knew he had a very short time to break everything and he did. Because he knew it takes much longer to fix things. However he was the one who did it.
Trump was a true rule-breaker who did manage to do quite a lot in the international arena, where he had far greater leeway to make changes beyond congressional control. Much of that activity was destructive, because Trump proved quite adept at smashing things. Indeed, Trump smashed things—the Iran nuclear deal, détente with Cuba—not just because of a peevish desire to destroy his predecessor’s legacy but as part of a scorched-earth policy to FUBAR the federal government for generations to come. As a result, Biden will spend much of his term picking up the pieces—and that’s a whole lot harder when you’re in handcuffs.
Donald Trump dispensed with even the pretense of paying tribute to workers on Labor Day. Instead his three word Labor Day Statement, blasted out to his supporters everywhere via the right-wing media machine, was blunt about his political priorities: “Fix 2020 First.”
Source: Trump, Texas, and the MAGA Drive for Power | The Smirking Chimp
Trump gave Republicans permission to be themselves. It “worked” for a time at the expense of the country, and it couldallow them to dominate politics for decades to come. But the party may face a high price for allowing the cruelest and most vicious elements of American society to run rampant. It might take some time, but the Trump effect could very well backfire on them in surprising ways.
Source: Donald Trump May Still Destroy the GOP, After All | Washington Monthly
Law professor Stephen Feldman explains why court-packing should be defended on both moral and political grounds
Source: Trump’s Supreme Court just showed why court-packing is necessary to save U.S. democracy | Salon.com
Washington: Former US president Donald Trump suffered twin setbacks on Friday, local time, when the Justice Department cleared the way to release his tax records and disclosed a memo showing he urged top officials last year to falsely claim his election defeat was “corrupt”. The department, reversing course from the stance it took when Trump was in office, paved the way for the Internal Revenue Service to hand over the Republican businessman-turned-politician’s tax records to congressional investigators – a move he has long fought.
Source: In one-two punch to Donald Trump, Justice Deptartment approves release of taxes, memo
It’s true. The former so-called president wanted “his” Federal Communications Commission to find a way to sanction Saturday Night Live for their satire of his administration. What a stupid snowflake abuse of power move. If you thought it was just the tweets…
Source: Yes, He Wanted FCC To Go After SNL | Crooks and Liars
MAGA
America’s reputation on the global stage appears to have significantly rebounded since former President Donald Trump left office and President Joe Biden became the commander in chief, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Thursday. As Bi
Source: America’s global image under Biden skyrockets compared to Trump, survey finds
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